Repent: A Word No One Wants to Hear

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 13 When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, 14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place. 16 For now I have chosen and [d]sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and [e]My eyes and [f]My heart will be there perpetually. –
2nd Chronicles 7:13-16



We are familiar with the word repent. We know it means to turn and go in a different direction. It’s not so much a 360 as it is a 180. It’s to be heading East and turn West. It’s to go in a direction that never leads back to the direction one was once traveling. I think sometimes our familiarity with a thing causes us to become detached from its true power.
I woke up this morning with this word rumbling in me and I found myself asking God to work the power of repentance in me. One of the dangers of being familiar with the word repent is that we think it’s a one and done action. We limit it to salvation, and we limit salvation to the first time that we come to Christ and renounce our sin. In reality we are saved and we are being saved and we have yet to be saved, therefore; we live out of the ongoing ethic of sanctification that leads to true holiness and it’s a pattern that’s seen all throughout scripture culminating in the coming of the physical Kingdom of God on the earth (Revelation 21).
Repentance is a recurring theme in the life of the Christian just as it is in the Scriptures. The Story of Scripture is God with Us and that reality is played out in the everyday rebellion, repentance, rescue and reconciliation life of the Believer. Take any book, any story, any person you want in Scripture and you’ll find these elements.
I think of Jeremiah and how God called him to declare a message of repentance and hope and how no one listened to him. I often wonder about Zedekiah in the moment God’s word came to pass before him. Did he think of the words of the Prophets as the king of Babylon killed his sons before he had his eyes gouged out (2nd Kings 25:6-8)?
There’s much talk about 2nd Chronicles 7:14 right now and there is much prayer that’s taking place and for that I’m thankful, but I think we’re missing an important step in our crying out. The first part of that passage deals with humility, and humility carries with it a deep sense of sorrow and repentance.
I want to encourage us to pray and ask God to work in us a true heart of repentance for our rebellion against Him as individuals and as nations so that He perchance may rescue us and reconcile us to Himself for the Glory of His name and truly hear us from heaven and forgive our sin and heal our land.
In Christ
Storm

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